Brancusi carved this work, including the cylindrical base, from a single piece of wild cherry wood. Its simplified form suggests the serrated outline of the comb that crowns a rooster’s head. While Brancusi would go on to create other, larger versions of The Cock and had ambitions to erect one at a monumental scale, he made only two versions in wood, and this is the only one that survives. The Cock held particular significance for Brancusi, who purportedly said time and again, “Le Coq c’est moi” (The Cock is me).

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